Chapter 11
In the aftermath of the attack, August Shenzhi surveys the base without any sense of accomplishment. He took the advice to stay put, and this is the outcome. Three dead guards and half his elite forces injured. It’s the first critical step of the battle plan you are drawing, his sister assured him.
Seiqi Weisanna is dead. She joined the defensive line in spite of August’s warning.
It was understood that there would be casualties, but some guards are more expendable than others; he didn’t want Weisannas marching into the attack.
He would have pulled back all of them if that hadn’t been suspicious.
Just as he has put spies inside San-Er, the opposition will have planted people in August’s camp to report back.
August closes the door to the war room. His guards have been murmuring about him these past few days.
He hears it, even if he says nothing in response.
They do not understand why he would consult Otta Avia for battle strategy.
They do not understand why he hears reports about San-Er preparing an attack, about the provinces revolting against palace guards—and he does not move, does not act further than a wave of his hand in dismissal.
A slight throbbing has started in August’s head.
Not enough water. Not enough air. He has not left his office, sleeping in the corner during the night and pacing during the day.
The exception he made was filching a bottle of bleach from the supplies volleyed out of San-Er, finding it tucked inside the medical supplies that went to the infirmary.
Anton’s idiotic work was easy to erase. He would have used the cheapest vegetable coloring from the kitchens.
While Seiqi took it upon herself to call into the infirmary and send reports on how Galipei was faring, August was busy burning his scalp, reverting his hair to a harsh white blond.
He wears no divine crown, so he is forced to settle for a metal circlet and these abrasions he scalded into his temples.
Galipei still hasn’t woken, but there’s hope…
He kicks the wall abruptly. He can’t think about it.
Otherwise he’ll end up like Seiqi Weisanna.
If she weren’t dead, perhaps August could have elevated her stature after Galipei made a healthy recovery, thanked her with a higher position.
Instead, she decided to go out of her way caring for him, causing a disturbance everywhere she went asking about his health.
She hurried to the front line as soon as there was news about an attack, and August knows that Seiqi had it in her head that Calla needed to answer for how she hurt Galipei.
Of course he knows. He feels it a thousand times fiercer than Seiqi Weisanna did.
“Fuck,” August whispers under his breath. He places his palms flat on the table, letting his head drop forward.
Since Otta arrived at the camp, August has felt the razor spool winding tighter and tighter around him.
The blade long broke skin, gliding through every part of his exterior left soft.
They are biding their time to enact a battle plan, yet August is right within distance of San-Er.
The throne he earned, the kingdom that he fought for.
All of it, taken from underneath his nose, and for what?
Not better governance, certainly. Rural dwellers have been passing the base in hundreds each day, heading for the cities.
The capital will overload. The kingdom will break from the center.
All to avoid him? The son of a rubber-factory owner? They will tolerate three generations of Shenzhis and Tuoleimis, but August is where they want to draw the line, after these years he spent planning to save them?
A knock. Before he’s turned to face the door, it’s already opening, bringing Otta inside. Her blouse is bloodied. She’s undone the top three buttons to make room for the enormous bandage wrapped around her shoulder.
“What happened to you?” August asks.
“I’m fine. Thank you for your concern, brother,” Otta returns. She’s picked up a gossamer sash for her uninjured shoulder, trailing a path after her. “I thought I told you to stay put.”
August is aware that this arrangement will not work for long.
Otta treats him like her subject—Otta, his half sister, has always held some level of disdain for him, starting from when they were both mere palace residents who entered aristocracy only by their aunt’s marriage.
At least the truth, finally, casts some sense onto this attitude.
“I was staying put,” August returns dryly. “I went outside only after the battle ended.”
Given how early she was invaded, the true Otta Avia was gone before anything mattered.
He doesn’t know when it happened: the day of the royal wedding when August was eight and Otta was ten and the palaces gathered together to allow an interaction between Otta and Calla Tuoleimi, or earlier, during one of those invitations when August and Otta were invited to visit their aunt in the Palace of Earth and Calla, too, was wandering the halls by happenstance, newly returned from Rincun with an age-old queen tamped under her qi.
August doesn’t know which recourse is harder to believe.
Whether Sinoa was so perceptive as to target Otta Avia long before August had started his crusade for the throne, or she waited for years in an occupied body she couldn’t control, surviving until she could slip out unnoticed.
Because it is convenient, is it not? As far as August’s sense of familial loyalty is concerned, Sinoa Tuoleimi has always been his sister. Otta was the face she wore until she could resume her fight, her second chance for her throne.
And here she is now.
“I would count this a success,” Otta remarks. “Wouldn’t you?”
“I don’t know,” August says. “There was a moment where it seemed you wanted to take the body back.”
Otta stiffens. She tosses a portion of the sash over her injured shoulder, covering the blood.
“I said I wouldn’t.”
This is why she didn’t want him watching. Just in case the opportunity arose, and she couldn’t resist.
“You spoke with Anton for quite some time too. What was that about?”
“If he is acting as their general, then he is the one who should be most afraid of me. When he feels threatened, the Crescents pick up on it accordingly.” Otta drops into a chair.
The plastic hinges creak in protest. “They surrendered and fled. There’s our goal achieved.
And I counted fewer than twenty, which is one temple acting alone.
After this, no temple will care to support her. ”
Because Calla took the throne in alliance with the Crescent Societies, August has to be very careful.
The smarter way to wage war isn’t to fight them both, but to drive them apart first. Wield Otta’s power as a shock, frighten the religious lunatics so that they are no help to Calla any further than a formality.
Proceed into the provinces, concentrate his effort and his forces there.
Secure each yamen and halt resources into San-Er.
Starve the twin cities until they revolt against the Crescents.
Then haul Calla in.
That is the path Otta has sketched for him.
“With our first operation complete,” Otta says, “you should coronate me as a ruler alongside you. Haven’t there always been two thrones in Talin?”
August looks away. This, too, was coming sooner or later.
He only didn’t know whether she’d be patient enough to wait until after the war was won.
What she wants, she gets. What she doesn’t want, she discards.
His sister has always been like this. Why would she be any different just because August knows the truth about her now?
“Funny.” He leans back on the table. “I assumed there were only two thrones after Her Majesty Sinoa Tuoleimi was defeated.”
“This era of Talin remembers two thrones as status quo,” Otta counters. “I have not spoken false. It would serve you well to restore the structure of the kingdom, back to the way it was before the Palace of Heavens fell. Offer your people a sense of safety.”
August scoffs. “I’d like to wait until Talin has settled before enacting any restoration.”
“The panic is exactly what you ought to take advantage of. They need a savior.” Though she nods her chin toward August, it’s clear that she’s talking about herself. “They need a god.”
“You are not a god.”
“I am close enough.”
August resists the urge to massage his temples. Mere months ago, he barely believed the whispers about their natural qi extending and changing. He thought the Crescent Society experiments were a con, that the suppression of light while jumping was surely a trick.
Now, if Otta is to be believed, he must comprehend that the old gods are not myths. That, a hundred years ago, Talin’s pantheon possessed qi directly from the heavens, and they walked the earth wielding such power.
August still doesn’t buy it. Perhaps the kingdom witnessed great feats at one point in their history, but a man with more qi does not make them a god. It makes them powerful. He has seen this line crossed before too. He was once dear friends with Anton Makusa.
“Tell me something,” August says. His sister’s eyes are still black: the color they inherited from their father, who took his final breath with only August at his side and Otta nowhere to be found. “What is your goal at the end of this war?”
“You know the answer to that. I have one chance to take the body back.”
“Ah,” August says. “That’s right.”
His sister’s eyes are black, not yellow, because her unnatural escape was not without cost. A considerable amount of her power remains in her reborn body, and when the imposter—the one that August knows as his cousin—took over, the body became doubled.
Otta feigned indifference when she told him this.
She cannot meld herself back in unless the body is significantly weakened or the imposter leaves.
And Otta will not admit it, but she must fear the likelihood that she cannot best the imposter.
She must fear that she has one chance, and either it works…
or she fades into the ether, as she should have when she was invaded in Rincun the first time.
The imposter has been Calla far longer than she has. It does not give her a promising chance.
“We can discuss your coronation at that point,” August decides. “Better once you’re wearing Calla’s body.”
“My body,” Otta corrects in a snap. “Don’t forget that I was born Calla Tuoleimi.”
August has not forgotten. He cannot forget, so long as she is a real Tuoleimi and he is not a Shenzhi by blood.
So long as there’s the possibility that the divine crown could strike him dead when he puts it on, and then there would be only Sinoa Tuoleimi left to the rule the kingdom, as she wanted a hundred years ago.
“In conclusion,” August says calmly, “we wait until the war is won. It is far less confusing for the kingdom to accept that Calla Tuoleimi and I are on the same side again. No need to get Otta Avia involved.”
Otta’s jaw tightens. Her expression darkens, then clears for an exaggerated simper instead. She’s deciding to play nice. Just as he cannot be rid of her, she cannot afford to lose him.
“I understand,” Otta says. “Excuse me. I will go oversee cleanup. The Weisannas want to speak to you about moving camp soon.”
August nods. He watches her stand. Her silk-smooth sash trails after her. When she reaches the door, her hand coming down on the handle, he calls, “Wait.”
Otta halts. She turns, only slightly, showing him half her face.
“Who is wearing Calla?” August asks. “Do you know?”
The air turns charged. Otta, for a second, seems unwilling to answer.
She has delivered August a successful stratagem today, and he has yet to reward her.
He hasn’t fallen to his knees promising a bounty in return; rather, he is asking for more.
In their youth, he struggled to tolerate her company precisely because of this—any favor was a mark struck on the scoreboard, and then Otta would rush to remind him that he owed her, again and again until it drove him mad.
He remembered thinking that she would grow out of it with age.
Who could have known she was decades old and still too petty to possess subtlety?
Otta shakes her head.
“It doesn’t matter who it is. She’s nothing more than a false god now.”
When Otta pulls the door open, it is in perfect timing to a Weisanna arriving outside. She sidles out without another word, ignoring the guard, who is heaving for breath. They must have run through the building.
“What’s going on?” August asks the guard.
Otta’s footsteps echo away. The guard is still trying to control their breath.
It isn’t good decorum to be panting while delivering a message.
August considers, briefly, that Seiqi Weisanna would not behave like this, and then he must push it out of his mind, because she made her decision, and she was sacrificed in battle.
“Your Majesty,” the guard finally declares. “Galipei is waking up.”